Entries Tagged 'politics' ↓

By Sparta

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
Washington Times: Byrd upheld law – when it helped Democrats

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

There was an omission in the listing of noteworthy votes by the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, in the article “Sen. Robert Byrd, longest-serving member of Congress, dies at 92″ (Web, News, Monday). I refer, of course, to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.

On Aug. 6, 1974, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette quoted Mr. Clinton as saying of President Nixon: “No question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI … is an impeachable offense. … If a president of the United States ever lied to the American people, he should resign.”

Twenty-four years later, on Dec. 19, 1998, Mr. Clinton was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming only the second president in U.S. history to be impeached and the only man popularly elected as president to have been so indicted.

Mr. Byrd made the following statements regarding Mr. Clinton’s impeachment, Published in the Congressional Record for Feb. 12 1999: “The president plainly lied to the American people. Of course, that is not impeachable, but he also lied under oath in judicial proceedings” and, “The president lied to the American people, and, while a great majority of the people believe, as I do, that the president made false and misleading statements under oath, still, some two-thirds of the American people do not want the president removed from office.”

Much is made of Mr. Byrd being the “soul” of the Senate, the one to hold his colleagues to the letter of the Constitution. It seems, however, that was only the case when Mr. Byrd deemed doing so to be convenient or politically expedient. Having admitted that Mr. Clinton’s perjury charges reached the prerequisite for removal from office, he wrote, “I called for these proceedings to be dismissed, out of genuine concern for the divisive effect that an ultimately futile trial would have on the Senate and on the nation.” Failing to get the proceedings dismissed, he voted against conviction.

In other words, out of concern for the nation (i.e., the Democratic Party) Mr. Byrd chose to not follow the letter and intent of the Constitution.

STELLA L. JATRAS

Camp Hill, Pa.

By 1389

How to stop the arrogance of power

A recent post on this blog, Is the US the last fortress standing? raised the issue of what peaceful means are available to get rid of a bad government in the US. At present, we do not have much recourse, other than to move toward state sovereignty and eventual secession.

But with a suitable Constitutional amendment, which we could put into effect as soon as we have the political will to do it, we could add one more effective tool for enforcing government accountability.

Senator Lindsey Graham is out of line

In the Blogmocracy comment thread, Signs of Sanity Surfacing in New York City, I became involved in the following conversation:

FurryOldGuyJeans wrote:

Sen. Graham: Tea party will die out

WASHINGTON, July 1 (UPI) — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said much of his work is “completely opposite” from the Tea Party and predicts the movement will “die out.”

“Everything I’m doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement’s at,” Graham told The New York Times Magazine in a profile that will be published Sunday, The Hill reported Thursday.

1389AD wrote:

Lindsey Graham is a disgrace. He is also whistling past his own graveyard. The Tea Party movement is very strong in SC, and he’s accurately perceived as a sellout. I doubt that he’ll be elected again. Unfortunately, his term won’t be up for another four years.

FurryOldGuyJeans wrote:

There is always a recall election, if SC law allows for such.

1389AD wrote:

We don’t have that. Every state should have recall for ALL elected officials and, IMO, also for firing unelected bureaucrats, for nullifying unpopular laws, and for voting entire agencies out of existence. The same should apply to the federal government.

I do NOT believe in allowing plebiscites or ballot initiatives for the purpose of taking any “positive” action, such as enacting any new laws or regulations, or putting anybody into office, or spending any money. That leads to all kinds of problems with demagoguery and mob rule. Recall should work purely in the negative, as part of the checks and balances, as a restraint on reckless government action that does not enjoy the consent of the governed.

Why not term limits?

I do not think enacting more term limits will be the answer, and here is why:

• Term limits affect both the good and the bad, in effect throwing out the baby with the bath water.
• Term limits do not provide the voters with a mechanism for undoing the results of election fraud.
• Term limits allow a bad government to do too much damage before the term limits become effective.

As Glenn Beck points out, the body of four-term President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s was scarcely cold before the US enacted a Constitutional amendment limiting the Presidency to two terms. While I have no quarrel with that amendment, it fails to address our own predicament. By definition, term limits do nothing to stop a bad elected official from doing irreparable damage during his current term in office. Right now, we are looking at a situation in which we need to remove a bad president and many bad legislators as soon as we possibly can. We simply cannot afford to wait until 2012 for the president and 2014 for some senators who are actively flouting the expressed intent of their constituents, as though they do not expect our elections to matter any longer by the time their current terms expire.

Recall is an option we need

It’s time for American activists who respect the Constitution and the rule of law to begin a movement to enact an amendment to the US Constitution to allow recall elections to remove a president or any other federal official, and to allow any State to conduct a recall election to remove any of its US Senators or Representatives.

At the level of each State, we need the same thing, for removal of a bad governor, state legislator, or other state official. At this moment, the need for this at the federal level is priority number one.

By 1389

It’s time to stir the pot some more

My last post on the brouhaha at Grouchy Conservative Pundits (GCP) was harshly worded indeed, but nonetheless it was not harshly worded enough. I haven’t rattled enough cages yet. Until I start getting some hate mail, enraged comments in all kinds of languages, and maybe even some juicy death threats, I never know if I’m getting my message out, rather than just preaching to the choir.

Lots of people talk about respect…

Talk is cheap. If you’re going to play that game with me, you’ll have to ante up. I believe in giving respect ONLY where respect is due. People who want my respect have to earn it, and they cannot earn it by spewing flagrant and undeserved disrespect toward me and others, as did “Mike C.” and “Rayra” on GCP.

Intellect alone is not deserving of respect; it depends on what people do with it. I have known many people far more intelligent than those two, and who behave far better.

Current or former military service (assuming these people are who they say they are, and I have my doubts) in and of itself is not enough to earn my respect either; there are just as many despicable people among the military and former military as there are everywhere else. I had a recent ex-boss of that description; he was, and is, a crook who treated me like dirt and then got rid of me by transferring me to another position where I would not be paid as much as my contract specified, simply because I didn’t play along with his chicanery in manipulating department budgets. That ex-boss was one more example of the fact that the most consistently untrustworthy people out there are the ones who always talk the loudest about “having someone else’s back.” Yeah, right…with a knife between the ribs.

As far as military personnel are concerned, don’t even get me started on those US military who willingly took part in the bombing of the Serbs during the Kosovo War, or who failed (and still fail) to protect the lives, property, and freedom of the Serbs in occupied Kosovo. Every officer involved should have resigned their commissions. Those who failed to resign have genocide on their consciences, though I doubt that any of them will ever admit it.

Is he or isn’t he? Only his gardener knows for sure

As I said, I cannot determine for sure whether or not “Rayra” is a plant. It’s just as likely that “Rayra” is merely a deeply angry, confused, frightened, and mentally and emotionally unstable individual who is too impulsive to think anything through, can never admit being wrong about anything, sees no reason to learn to control his temper, has no respect for women or anybody he considers to be weaker than himself, has no interest in where anybody else is coming from, and lashes out blindly at anybody or anything that he sees as a threat to his ego or to his self-centered world view. Or he could simply be an outright psychopath; I’ve had the misfortune to be acquainted with a few of those too.

For obvious reasons, I would never WANT somebody like “Rayra” even to claim to be on my side. He is more a danger to his friends, such as they are, than to his enemies.

But whether “Rayra” is actually a plant isn’t the most important concern here. The point is that, whether “Rayra” intends it or not, his intemperate and misguided remarks further the interests of expanding the corrupt and tyrannical use of federal government power.

Why do so many people hate Russia?

As I mentioned in my earlier post, a truly irrational hatred of Russia is rife on GCP, and anybody who says a word in favor of Russia becomes a target. I have reason to believe that Russia is not only far less of a “despotism” than the US, but also it runs the country in the interest of its own citizens, its economy is growing instead of collapsing, it respects Christianity, and its leaders are loyal to their own country. Russia is nothing like its portrayal in the mainstream media.

We are acquainted with an American expat who has lived near Moscow for many years, and we get some information about what is going on in Russia from the inside. Also, one of our friends is an amateur astronomer who travels all over the world whenever there is an eclipse. He’s a rock-solid conservative Republican and has been so for many decades. He went to Russia the last time there was an eclipse there, and he liked it so much that he seriously considered blowing off the eclipse-viewing to spend more time traveling in Russia and meeting Russians.

No, I don’t agree with everything that the Russian government does, just as I will never agree with everything that any government does. We live in a fallen world and all governments are fallible. But I can well understand why, at this stage, Russia is a rival of the US and not an ally. Yes, Russia COULD have been an ally, but Americans blew the opportunity through our own selfishness and ambition. The carpetbaggers that came over to Russia from Harvard and the liberal think-tanks after the Berlin Wall came down inflicted incredible damage; they are the ones to blame for letting the oligarchs and gangsters take hold for as long as they did. Since that time, Putin and Medvedev have made considerable inroads against the oligarchs and gangsters. They’ve also instituted a flat tax that is not excessively high, they collect it even-handedly, and unlike the US, they don’t double-tax Russian citizens earning money overseas. If they’ve had to play rough against the Chechen jihadis and the media whores and NGOs that support the jihadis, then good for them.

I understand that many people continue to harbor suspicion and hatred against Russia as a result of the heritage of the Cold War. I myself was as ardent a supporter of the US during the Cold War as anybody could be. However, in the present day, such hatred against Russia is counterproductive and it sinks to the level of irrational bigotry. I haven’t observed the same degree of opprobrium leveled at China, our other Cold War enemy, even though China is much less free than Russia, China is not primarily a Christian country, China is more of a rival to us than Russia is, and the remnants of communism persist much more strongly there.

Pot, meet kettle

I would no more condemn Putin for having been in the KGB in the distant past, than I would condemn George H. W. Bush for having headed the CIA, which has done little to protect us, and much to get us into needless trouble. At least Putin is a Christian who has repented of whatever wrongdoing he has committed in that regard. Can you imagine an American president ever repenting of anything? I sure can’t. I doubt that we’ve had a real Christian president since Ronald Reagan, despite numerous photo-ops intended to prove the contrary.

Anybody can see that we have an even bigger mess in the US. What inroads has our federal government made against the Latin-American drug gangs, the SEIU, George Soros and his circle of oligarchs, the traitors at the New York Times and CNN, the traitors in the State Department, the commies in our universities, the crooks who run Detroit and Chicago, and last but not least, the jihadis that infest every corner of the US?

Shooting the messenger

Of course, it sent many people on GCP into fits of outrage to hear me say that Russia, despite its current rivalry with the US, has been cleaning up its internal messes, while the US has been sinking into an abyss. Their response was to shoot the messenger.

And why do so many people hate the Serbs?

There is plenty of evidence that they hate the Serbs over at GCP. This is ironic, considering that GCP was founded by people banned from Little Green Footballs, and considering that I was banned from Little Green Footballs for supporting the Serbs. Their antipathy toward the Serbs also serves to explain some of their hatred toward Russia, simply because the Russians have made some efforts to help the Serbs.

The US government, along with NATO and the EU, is still doing everything it can to destroy the economy and livelihood and what little remains of the sovereignty and culture of the Serbs, in order to help the jihadis to create a stronghold in the Balkans. And that includes the US military. I don’t even want to think about how many people on GCP might have been personally involved in one way or another. That’s between them and their Maker.

This foreign policy is not merely stupid, it sinks to the level of treason. The whole purpose of throwing the Serbs under the bus is to curry favor with the Saudis and other Muslim oil-producing nations. A lot of good that has done us! We would have done better just to colonize them and take over and de-Islamize the Middle East just as we once de-Nazified western Europe. As anybody could have predicted, like every other bunch of totalitarians, the jihadis are inherently evil and they will always bite the hands that feed them, which is what led to 9-11.

Does that statement surprise you? In case you don’t know, Osama bin Laden travels on a Bosnian Muslim passport granted to him by the late Alija Izetbegovic, who was literally a Nazi. It is not appropriate to invoke Godwin’s Law here, because we’re talking about an actual Nazi of the Third Reich. Notice that I do not call Izetbegovic an ex-Nazi, in that he was a lifelong unrepentant Nazi who recruited for Hitler as a young man. And the US government sided with Izetbegovic in the Bosnian War.

This collaboration with the jihadis in the Balkans has been going on ever since Reagan left office. I have grave doubts about the moral worth of the American people for consistently electing governments that support our enemies in this way. How am I supposed to be loyal to a government that is collaborating with our enemies? If I had been in Norway during the Second World War, should I have been loyal to Vidkun Quisling?

I harbor a faint hope that enough people in some state, somewhere in the US, will see the light in time to secede from a Quisling federal government that is deliberately laying us open to our enemies, so that at least some part of the US will be salvaged. If the turnaround doesn’t happen very soon, long before the 2012 election, it will be too late, and the America that we thought we knew will exist in name only.

Some will insist on remaining under the US federal government no matter what, so that their livelihood (and maybe their lives) will be bled away to support a socialist/jihadi federal tyranny that has chosen to represent not “American exceptionalism” or the “city on a hill” but the worst of all possible worlds. That’s their choice, but let them not claim their willful blindness as moral superiority.

By 1389

Yes, 1389 has been banned again…

I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve been banned from a lot of websites. I’ve been banned from Digg at least three times (for supporting Serbs and opposing jihadis), from Little Green Footballs once (again for supporting Serbs), from BoingBoing (after a single comment criticizing an article written by a left-wing admin), and even from StumbleUpon (my account was hacked and their admins never got around to reinstating me, so I eventually gave up).

Gotta collect ‘em all…

The latest forum that I’ve been banned from is Grouchy Conservative Pundits, a/k/a GCP, formerly Gulf Coast Pundits. No, I am not posting a clickable link here; you can find the link easily enough if you want. The reason I’m blogging about it here is to air my suspicions about what is going on both in public and behind the scenes on some websites and forums, and in some organizations, that portray themselves as conservative, but are not.

Yes, I’ll miss a few people on that board, and those few who miss me should not have any trouble finding me. Most people on the board are happy to see me gone, and have said so, though not in a public thread.

What trash talkers reveal about themselves

I make a point of being plain-spoken, but there is a huge difference between forthrightness and talking trash. Swears and vulgar epithets are not allowed in comments or articles on 1389 Blog, because they encourage bullying and flame wars, lower the tone of discourse, and can rapidly get out of control.

GCP has no such restrictions, but even so, I was amazed at the style of verbiage that GCP admin “Mike C.” used with me. He sounded so much like Charles Johnson (alias CJ) of the turncoat website Little Green Footballs that it wasn’t even funny. I have never been addressed in such a bitchy, snarky, condescending way by any heterosexual male in my entire life. Of course, “Mike C.” is just a screen name, and I have no knowledge of who “Mike C.” actually is and no information about his personal life, and am not interested in anything he may claim to have done that supposedly proves he’s a man. It all comes down to the fact that any male who would directly address a female in such a disgusting, contemptuous way, especially without any real provocation, is not a man.

“Mike C.” enforces a double standard when it comes to another blog admin whose screen name is “Rayra”. (Despite the feminine-sounding name, “Rayra” is, or claims to be, a male with a military background. Yes, I know, on the Internet, you never know who anybody actually is…) Be that as it may, “Rayra” is free to say whatever he wants on the GCP forum, as often as he wants and in as offensive a way as he pleases. On the other hand, women on the site had better confine themselves to echoing the opinions of the male admins, much as CJ’s female minions do with him. It is beneath my dignity to participate in that type of thing.

Neocons are not conservatives

Too many people on GCP seem to be “neocons” as opposed to conservatives, so much so that if truth in labeling applied to blogs and forums, that one should be called Grouchy Neocon Pundits. I have many reasons to avoid the neocons, but my biggest reason is that they can’t seem to figure out that America’s real foreign enemies are the jihadis, not the former Soviet Union, which is dead and gone.

As a person of Slavic descent, the reflexive hatred and suspicion directed toward Russia and other Slavic countries and peoples, particularly Orthodox Slavs, was starting to get old. Slav-bashing is based on a type of racism and bigotry, not on any real evidence. I hasten to say that I don’t approve of every decision that the present-day Russian government has made, but that isn’t the point. On the GCP forum, I did try to point out that Russia is not the Soviet Union, it is not interested in taking over Europe, and if we had not made such a mess of things ever since the Clinton Administration, Russia could potentially be a strong ally against both socialism and jihadism. At least they know what socialism is all about, and they reject it. But whenever I said anything about that, people on GCP would pile in on me like a ton of bricks.

“Conservatives” at the public trough

The major issue that led to my being banned from GCP had to do with my defending the idea that states have the right to secede (and should prepare to do so, as a way to stop the encroachment of socialism) and that Americans have the right to move to other parts of the world and even to become citizens there, if they so desire and if the other country admits them. I said then, and I still say, that declining to participate any further in supporting a tyrannical government, by means of secession or expatriation, can be a valid and principled stand against tyranny.

At that point, “Rayra” and “Mike C.” completely lost it, big time, and condemned me in every possible way.

No, I’m not going to risk copyright issues by directly quoting any of their nonsense here. Their screen names don’t actually identify them, so they have no cause for complaint about my “outing” them in any way. Obviously, they are forbidden to comment here, and I do not plan to visit, or link to, any other forum where they exert significant control.

• Anybody who goes ballistic over someone entertaining the idea of expatriating (or secession) to avoid ruinous taxation, is no conservative.
• Anybody who, without any evidence, levels a blanket accusation of “tax chicanery” against American expatriates who simply open an overseas bank account, is no conservative.

Evidently, “Rayra”, “Mike C.”, and their supporters seem awfully worried about keeping those federal tax dollars flowing so that they will keep getting their government checks of one sort or another. The very idea that I and others might vote with our feet, take up foreign citizenship, have a decent and peaceful life somewhere else, and stop funding their retirement, is anathema to them.

The very fact that “Rayra” and “Mike C.” went berserk over the very thought of Americans refusing to condemn themselves to a lifetime of poverty and ruin, followed by administrative euthanasia under “Obamacare” in their old age, simply to stave off the fiscal collapse of the federal government, shows where their loyalties really lie. It isn’t to the beleaguered American people, it’s to the federal government, and their quarrel with that government is that they aren’t currently the ones reaping most of the stolen loot.

And if people like “Mike C.” and “Rayra” were running the government instead of the Obaminators, would we be any better off? I doubt it.

Why it’s right to vote with our feet

It only got worse after I pointed out that people who fled the Third Reich after 1933, or the Soviet Union in 1917, had done the right thing. By going somewhere else with their labor and their livelihood, they prevented their efforts and earnings from being used to establish and run a tyrannical socialist regime. Those who voluntarily stayed were later accused of collaborating with the evils that followed.

All of was too much for “Rayra.” He posted a viciously-worded reply, in which he heaped scorn on all those who left the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, and other regimes, blaming them for not having stayed there and killed the dictators. He immediately went on to say that the Obama regime is getting ready to murder millions in the same way. In other words, “Rayra” implied that it is my moral obligation to stay in the US so as to kill off Obama and company.

“Rayra” does not read this blog, or he would know that I’ve already explained why nobody should do anything of the sort. (See “Going Postal” Empowers Evil Tyrants.)

This is not to say that jihadis, socialists, and totalitarians of any stripe, anywhere in the world, deserve anything other than the harshest of all possible fates. But it is not up to me to make that happen! It would be both pointless and counterproductive for individual Americans to put their lives on the line to go out with weapons and kill off the jihadis, the socialists, and the corrupt government officials who are selling us out to them. Okay, maybe I’ve gotten to be too peaceable in my old age, but there is some valid reasoning behind my stance on this matter. The long and the short of it is that any attempt to kill off these evildoers simply gives the current regime more opportunities to smear and demonize dissidents, and to enforce even more repressive measures.

Another reason why beheading the regime won’t work is that the main problem isn’t with Obama and a few people at the top, it’s with the entire American society being foolish enough to let Obama get into power. (See Words of Wisdom from the Czech Republic.)

As far as I know, nobody’s suggesting killing off everybody who was foolish enough to vote for Obama! The figurehead is always expendable, and there’s always another to take his place. Of course, one can only hope that our society will eventually come to its senses and use legal means to impeach and remove all public officials who support America’s enemies and who fail to uphold the Constitution, and then try and punish the perpetrators, along with their financiers and backers, for corruption, treason, et cetera after removing them from office. But such legal housecleaning, however justifiable and appropriate, is not a solution to the folly of the American electorate, simply because it could not possibly succeed until such time as Americans have already awakened from the folly that allowed Obama to get into power in the first place.

Expect to find a plant in every conservative organization

It wouldn’t surprise me if “Rayra” weren’t some sort of agent provocateur who wants to flush people who harbor anti-government thoughts out of the woodwork. While I don’t have any direct evidence that “Rayra” is a plant, suffice it to say that if I were to encounter him in person, I’d bring a watering can!

Put it this way, if “Rayra” can get people to admit that they also think that killing off the socialist Obama administration would be the right thing to do, then somebody from the goverment can arrest those people, and also use it as an excuse for all sorts of repressive measures against “domestic terrorism.” If you think that’s a stretch, look what happened with the Hutaree people. I find it absolutely despicable for “Rayra” and others to sit back, eat popcorn, and collect their government checks, while goading other people into taking actions that will ruin their lives and will only worsen government tyranny. If “Rayra” actually felt a moral obligation to put his own life on the line by killing Obama, I still would consider it misguided, but it is NOT his business to heap scorn on others such as myself for being unwilling to do the same. But I think that “Rayra” is just a bully and a coward who doesn’t mind getting other people into trouble as long as it doesn’t cause him any inconvenience.

So I decided to call his bluff once and for all. I told “Rayra” that, unless I saw “Rayra” himself, and NOT someone else, on the news as having assassinated Obama, that I would never take seriously anything “Rayra” says. My purpose was either to make “Rayra” reveal what he is up to, or, preferably, to get him to take back his remarks.

Instead, “Mike C.” deleted my comment in a fit of intemperate rage, probably before “Rayra” even got a chance to read it, and shortly after that I was banned.

People can draw whatever conclusions they want from that, but my advice is to watch out for people in any conservative venue who behave like this, and never to trust any of them.

More about this here.

By CzechRebel

I recently received these words of wisdom by email:

This guy cuts to the chase….sad part is I’m not sure the “fools” can get it.

Some people have the vocabulary to sum up things in a way you can understand them. This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. We have a lot of work to do.

The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.

Click here to visit 2.0: The Blogmocracy!

From Maggie’s Farm.

The American citizen and taxpayer is being raped. It’s as simple as that. It’s Chicago-style political thuggery writ large. Once this parasite takes hold of any part of the economy or the body politic, it uses every stratagem to bleed its host until nothing is left. Even if someone, somehow, manages to stop the “euthanasiator” from forcing through this particular round of national socialist “health care” legislation, it will keep coming back around again and again and again, because the system is broken.

What to do? The options are capitulation to tyranny (unacceptable to me), violence (counterproductive, in that it gives the tyrants more excuses for repressive measures), and departure from the totalitarian state.

Departure en masse means secession. True, it was thwarted – temporarily - in the US in the 1860s, but much more recently it succeeded, without bloodshed, with the “Velvet Divorce” in Czechoslovakia. If sufficiently many citizens of sufficiently many states want it, it’ll happen.

Don’t let the leftists fool you! The growing demand for secession in the US has nothing to do with bringing back slavery. Quite the contrary; secession has everything to do with protecting ourselves from being enslaved to a tyrannical federal government.

I have posted some tea party, state sovereignty, and Southern regional links in the 1389 Links blogroll in the sidebar of this log. The movement has been quite active in South Carolina and elsewhere. If you have any more links, by all means, post them here and let me know. There’s still time to get involved.

Departure as an individual means expatriation. That’s a drastic measure, but if you have some marketable skills and some ability to acquire another language, there are some options. If you think you might be interested, read the articles here and here.

We will be blogging more about secession at 1389 Blog.

As anyone with even the most rudimentary powers of observation and cognition already knows, the US federal “stimulus bill” has nothing to do with putting unemployed Americans back to work and nothing to do with rebuilding our lost industrial base.

It is all about expanding the scope of government control, at any cost.

The Stimulus Bill’s Hidden Attack On What We Eat, Drink, And Smoke

It’s on pages 66 and 67 on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which created a $1 billion “Prevention and Wellness Fund.” Of that, $650 million went to Kathleen Sebelius’s Department of Health and Human Services and has been used to start a new program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called “Communities Putting Prevention to Work” (CPPW).

Where does that giant pot of grant funding under the CPPW go? What it calls “MAPPS Interventions for Communities Putting Prevention to Work.” MAPPS stands for “Media, Access, Point of decision information, Price, and Social support/services.” In other words, strategies for changing our behavior, for social engineering on a large-scale, and, it seems, circumventing the normal democratic process. In a 14-page guidance for grant applicants, the CDC details tactics that grant applicants should include in their plans. It includes “counter-advertising” against targeted products, complete tobacco usage bans, limiting “unhealthy food availability” (the really bad stuff like “whole milk, sugar sweetened beverages, high-fat snacks”), and of course taxes (or in CDC lingo: “changing relative prices of healthy vs. unhealthy items”).

A supplemental document explains in more detail what the targets are, including restricting availability of soft drinks “in homes, schools, work sites, and communities.”

Oh, and by the way…since when has there ever been anything wrong with whole milk?

You heard it here first: America is headed toward a future that combines the worst of North Korea with the worst of shari’a law. Truly a fate worse than death.